REGEXP

[daled]

I'm using REGEXP to search a database.  Is there a way to order the results in the order of how well they match the original expression?

[fenway]

Not really, regexp support in mysql blows, it's just a simple binary match.

[Wildbug]

You could use multiple regular expressions and add the matches (0 if no match, 1 if match), and the more that match will be ordered higher.

 

SELECT (col1 RLIKE 'a[bc]') + (col1 RLIKE 'xz[0-9]$') + (col1 RLIKE '^55') AS score
FROM table
WHERE col1 RLIKE 'a[bc]' OR col1 RLIKE 'xz[0-9]$' OR col1 RLIKE '^55'
ORDER BY score DESC, col1